An activist raises concerns that some defaulters are exploiting Pune’s amnesty scheme, hurting honest taxpayers and the civic body.
Pune: So, there’s this activist named Vivek Velankar who’s been digging into how some property tax defaulters are really taking advantage of the Pune Municipal Corporation’s amnesty scheme. It turns out that a lot of these folks keep coming back year after year to benefit from it, which is pretty unfair to those who pay their taxes honestly.
He got some info through the Right To Information Act and found that in 2024, a whopping 42% of the people benefiting from the scheme were the same ones who had been doing so since 2020-21. Can you believe that? In the first year, there were about 1.49 lakh defaulters, and the PMC lost around ₹210 crore because of this.
Then, in the following year, they introduced the scheme again, and another 66,454 defaulters jumped on the bandwagon, costing the civic body another ₹64 crore. Velankar is saying that this cycle needs to stop. It’s just not fair to the honest taxpayers who are doing the right thing. He believes the PMC should rethink this whole scheme because it’s causing a lot of financial strain on the city.
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